Orthodontic treatment applied to straighten or align teeth of a patient dates back hundreds of years. Generally, orthodontic treatment includes the use of wires wrapped around the teeth of a patient. Around the mid-1970s, chiefly due to improvements in adhesive technology, the preferred method shifted to bonding brackets directly onto the teeth of the patient and running elastic archwires of rectangular cross-sectional shape through archwire slots disposed within the brackets.
Typically, manual selection of orthodontic appliance components may be made by an orthodontic practitioner from available inventories of standard or otherwise pre-manufactured components, which the orthodontic practitioner assembles to form the orthodontic appliance to treat the patient. In most cases, the appliance components, such as the brackets, may be adapted to a certain tooth, for instance an upper canine, but not to the individual tooth of the specific patient. Adaptation of the bracket to the individual tooth of the specific patient may commonly be performed by filling the gap between the individual tooth surface and the bracket surface with adhesive to thereby bond the bracket to the individual tooth such that the archwire slot orients in a horizontal plane when the teeth move to a targeted position, whereby the driving force for moving the teeth to the targeted position is provided by the archwire disposed within the archwire slots.
As stated above, conventional brackets may typically be designed and manufactured based upon average anatomy. Consequently, orthodontic practitioners select what they perceive to be the brackets and archwires having a relatively similar design to that required to treat a particular patient, then modify the design to treat the particular patient. Some modifications may be performed when the orthodontic appliance is initially installed, but almost inevitably, modification is required during the course of treatment of the patient. These subsequent modifications may take the form of replacement of brackets, but most commonly take the form of periodic bending and reshaping of the archwire as the treatment progresses. Thus, the treatment of the patient has become a manual feedback system in which the orthodontic practitioners monitors the progress of the treatment and then readjusts the orthodontic appliance to correct the forces being applied to the teeth to bring the teeth to targeted positions. As a result, the patient may be subjected to treatment over a period of time which may be greater than would be necessary if the orthodontic appliance were initially optimally designed. In addition, the time required of the orthodontic practitioner for implementation of the treatment may be several times greater than if modification of the orthodontic appliance was not needed. Hence, the orthodontic practitioner may be restricted to treating fewer patients and the cost of the treatment to the patient and/or to the orthodontist may be increased.
Systems and methods for providing custom orthodontic appliances are gaining acceptance. Typically, these systems and methods take into account individual patient anatomy and design and manufacture custom appliances on a case-by-case basis. Often, custom appliance designs are based on calculated ideal occlusions or treatment plans by or with the aid of computers or computer programs, whereby tooth setups or post-treatment tooth positions may be determined based on digital data of the tooth shapes and other dental anatomy of the individual patient. The resulting custom appliances, when properly designed and manufactured, can be fitted to the teeth of a patient by an orthodontic practitioner, usually using custom jigs or other positioning devices or techniques that may be provided with the custom appliances to insure placement at predetermined positions on the teeth so that the orthodontic appliance functions as it was designed to. Properly installed, such a custom appliances can move the teeth of a patient in less time and with a minimum of post-installation manipulation by the orthodontic practitioner.
However, custom orthodontic appliances may not always be available or may not always be desired, for example because the design and manufacturing can be relatively expensive and time-consuming.
Accordingly, a need exists for a system and method which can improve the selection and customization of standard or otherwise pre-manufactured orthodontic appliance components to achieve the entire useful range of orthodontic mechanics in a cost-effective and timely fashion.